World Telemedia Day 2: Andrew Fisher, Shazam

They do

1. Content sourcing

Customers often tag music which is only just out - so they have to work v quickly to acquire content in local territories before it goes mainstream. Shazam get this from all sorts: labels, ringtone providers, others (e.g. MTV). This is really difficult.

2. Distribution/promotion

They've changed how they do this; historically one key partner in each territory, with multiple partners in larger territories. Direct sales to third parties or direct-to-consumer.

They prefer working with smaller organisations, monitor performance etc. Once they have a presence they get credibility. Direct sales make sense once you're familiar with a territory

3. Supporting multiple devices
4. Business Models

Subscription models; challenge is finding right price point
They're looking at free-to-consumer in Japan.
Would advise against spending weeks doing spreadsheets and debating. Test, evaluate, and repeat.

5. Legal frameworks

There are lots of legislative issues. They wanted to tie in dual downloads to their services but it requires relevant licenses, which the guys they were talking to didn't have. This tripped Shazam up during their planning - they did diligence on who had the capabilities, but not who had the licenses.

Jamsters subscription service in North America resulted in a big lawsuit.

Deploying IP in China has required a lot of care and a different approach.

He would advise understanding local legislation themselves, and building in flexibility; when you go global things change a lot.

Question: What information do you have on consumer interest? How many tags of a song result in a download.
Answer: Shazam have 4m customers, 2m calls/month (ramping up 100% over last 3-6 months). This is a small adoption rate considering the 500m handsets which have access to the service today. They need to drive behaviour change in consumers which takes time. They see Shazam as a mundane transaction-enabling technology; a convenient way to buy music products. Over the summer they had a 40% conversion rate to track downloads, which is more than they see with ringtone sales.

They're now doing a Java application rather than IVR - which is apparently quicker and easier.